Political sign thief caught on video

November 3, 2012

Alleged sign thief

For weeks, signs promoting council candidates Kevin Rice and Dan Carpenter and mayoral candidate Steve Barasch have been disappearing from yards around the city of San Luis Obispo. Earlier today, a local man captured a video of a woman attempting to steal one of Rice’s signs.

On three separate occasions, Rice and Carpenter signs have been taken from the corner lot that sits off of Foothill Boulevard where the woman was discovered removing a sign. She claimed she wanted it for her room and that her name was Rice before she ran off.

Rice is asking anyone with information of who the potential thief is to call him at 805-602-2616.

69 Comments

Rice finds someone who is willing to display one of his signs, and then he publicly attacks her and stirs up a lynch-mob attitude against her. Then he goes on to tell people they can have one of his signs if they have the same name last name as him.

And thus we are left with more evidence of Rice’s “diplomacy” skills.

What is ironic is that Rice had enough signs to allow the young lady one for her dorm and replace the one on his lawn. But Rice seems hard-wired to want to play the “GOTCHA” game, even when it makes no sense whatsoever from a political or diplomatic perspective. That’s the Kevin Rice way of politics. Inept and sad.

This is just more political tricks from Rice. He did the same when he ran Ed Waage’s campaign into the ground. What makes you think a rank and file firefighter like Rice would stop his union buddies from bringing back binding arbitration? That is if he’s even in town to vote. And Barasch is a 9/11 denier which anyone who googles his name can see. Do we really want some nutjob as mayor who thinks that Arab terrorists were innocent of the 9/11 plot and it was really the federal government that did it? Marx is a terrible mayor but Barasch would be 100 times worse!

You guys are hilarious. Could this woman be taking a sign as part of a shady DCC conspiracy? Maybe, but it’s extremely unlikely. If the DCC has people to spare, they are going to use them to go door to door and get out the vote, not steal signs for a little known candidate for city office from an sleepy side street far from a polling place. And they certainly would not have them steal signs from that candidate’s own yard!

Considering that:
1. It is very common for people (especially young people) to steal signs, especially when it has their name on it.
2. Rice is a very common last name.
3. Kevin’s house on Luneta has lots of student residents nearby.
4. Most students care little about city politics – few if any probably know who Kevin Rice is or what he stands for.
I think the most obvious answer is that this woman really was stealing the sign because she (or her boyfriend/friend/etc)’s name is Rice. Remember Occam’s razor?

And sorry Kevin, despite what you may think about your self-importance, defeating you as a candidate is probably extremely low on the DCC’s priority list, especially with such a tight presidential race going on. If you caught her stealing a Romney/Ryan sign, you might actually have a case to accuse her of malicious intent rather than it being some sophomoric prank.

” Remember Occam’s razor?” Yes lets do that. Rice has had many signs stolen. Is it just a coincidence that the one person who they caught “claims” to have the same last name and has nothing to do with all the others that were stolen? I find that “highly doubtful”.

I recall when I was on George Luna’s campaign committee in A-Town. He had over 400 signs stolen. About 300 of them were found dumped together in a field.

Ok let’s be honest here. It’s clear from watching the video that it was filmed in front of Kevin Rice’s house on Luneta Drive. It’s also clear from the nasally quality of the cameraman’s voice that Kevin is doing the filming. So why doesnt the article call this out instead of pretending it’s a random local man who caught the sign stealer?

Kevin, we know you read and post here so do you deny that this video was filmed by you in front of your house?

So I’m guessing either this girl was extremely unlucky to choose to steal Kevin rice signs from his own house or she is some co-ed he hired to pretend to steal signs so he could film her. either way it smacks of grand political theater on the eve of the election.

The incumbent’s crowd will say anything. A shame they can’t stick to issues, like how the city’s budget has more than doubled in the same period the population only went up 3%. And how the incumbent voted to criminalize homeless people. And–my favorite–how the incumbent attempted to grant a special favor to the ex-mayor to stop an audible crosswalk assistive device for blind people from being installed next to the ex-mayor’s house IN EXCHANGE FOR HER ENDORSEMENT.

Your budget statistic is meaningless without context. It’s the sort of vapid sound bite that politicians love to throw around because it’s eye catching, but it never tells the whole story.

What time period are you talking about? Did city revenues also increase? Did you account for inflation? How does that increase compare to other cities of this size? Were these nameless incumbents responsible for the budget increases you refer to during that time period?

But yes, I do agree that the real issue isn’t some girl stealing a sign from your front yard. Signs are marginally useful to get a name out there, and you parlayed the sign stealing stunt into even better publicity for yourself. Bravo.

A good issue for you to address would be your job commitment that requires you to be in Los Angeles several days a week. You have criticized Lichtig for being down in LA several days a week in several of your SLOShank xtranormal videos, yet you will be doing the same. How are you going to prevent that from affecting your service on the council?

Kevin, although he backed Carpenter in a cynical ploy, is extremely anti-environmental and pro risk taking activities inclyding some allgedely illegal such as using the Cuesta Grade rail system and his own vehicle aand allegedly train hoping. ON his side Kevin did win the Darwin Award for his video os his rail activities. It is given to people as a sign of disrespect. Only in SLO: “Man who won Darwin Award Member of Council.”

I wonder if the thief/liar in this video is in the employ of Cory Black? The paid campaign adviser to Marx/Ashbaugh/Aranguena. That Democratic Central Committee slate is looking dirtier and dirtier with every passing day.

OK, so some girl is stealing Kevin Rice’s signs. While that is vaguely interesting, it would be much better if CCN sought a little more balance in which politicians they investigate.

There are allegations that Kevin Rice has unpaid tax liens of over $40,000. When Parkinson was accused of this, it was front page news on CCN, but apparently Rice gets a free pass on the same? Also, Kevin Rice has a job in Los Angeles as a firefighter where he spends many of his days, but this major geographic handicap has not been explored on CCN, yet Katie Leitig’s Los Angeles connections have been criticized on CCN.

I have appreciated CCN’s ground breaking investigations in the past, but in this case it would be nice if CCN tried to at least put up a front of impartiality instead of posting articles to prop up its favored candidates.

paragon, It’s a well known fact that Kevin Rice lives in SLO and is out of town far less days than he is in town. There is no rule about not being allowed to work out of town, if there was, it would effect most politicians.

I realize there is no rule against working out of town while being on the city council. However, Rice owes it to the citizens to explain exactly what his out of town work obligations are and why it won’t impact his service on the council.

He has not addressed this publicly and only vaguely mentions he works “out of town” on his website, but does not mention this work is in Los Angeles, which is at best a 7 hour round trip journey, if you are lucky enough not to hit traffic. Also, most firefighters work shifts of 24, 48 or sometimes 72 hours. If Rice is working one of these extended shifts and an important emergency council meeting is called, will he be able to leave work and attend the meeting? Is his priority to his job or to the council? This are important questions that he should have addressed.

People on this site brought up similar questions about Katie Lichtig’s frequent trips to LA (as they should have – I am certainly no Lichtig fan!) I think Rice’s out of town commitments should receive the same scrutiny, as well as any tax liens he may have. Maybe these are all non-issues, but CCN should investigate them like any of the other political issues they have reported on.

The story is that it’s simply not “some girl is stealing Kevin Rice’s signs.” This video is an example of the dirty arrogance of a group of people (likely those who support the Democratic Central Committee’s candidates) who feel they have some sort of license to steal the signs of competing candidates.

Rather than put the sign back up and apologize, she lied, compounding her thievery. I wonder who paid/programmed/encouraged her to act in such a manner? Cory Black? The DCC itself? That’s the real story!

To imply that the DCC is encouraging sign stealing is a pretty heavy accusation to be throwing around with no proof. Again, this article (and your comment) lacks balance. It is implied that only signs from Rice, Carpenter, and Barach are being stolen, but were any democratic or independent candidates contacted to see if their signs were being stolen as well? Without knowing the identity of this woman, it’s impossible to know her true motives. For all we know, Rice could have hired her to act in the video to drum up some interesting publicity on the eve of the election.

The ONLY people putting party politics ahead of San Luis Obispo are those on the DCC slate — Marx, Ashbaugh and Aranguena. I don’t believe Barasch, Carpenter, Rice or the rest are affiliated with any political parties, at least with respect to their campaigns.

Any group (such as the DCC) that crafts a slate to control local politics is trouble to me and not above stealing signs.